Metal oxides can have desirable and tunable chemical, optical and electrical properties by controlling their chemical compositions and morphologies, such as through doping or reduction to form oxygen vacancies. Such metal oxides are promising building blocks in many applications, such as catalysis, sensors, batteries, solar cells, solar fuels, and photoelectrochemical devices. However, these applications are hindered by the lack of scalable and economic methods for the synthesis of doped or reduced metal oxides.
It is against this background that a need arose to develop the embodiments described herein.